


The Mistletoe of Cair Paravel

by ephemeralblossom



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Celebrations, Christmas, Christmas Party, F/F, F/M, Family, First Time, Fluff, Holidays, M/M, Mistletoe, ToT: Chocolate Box, ToT: Extra Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-25 12:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12531444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralblossom/pseuds/ephemeralblossom
Summary: The year Lucy was twenty, she declared that they would have mistletoe at the Christmas ball.





	The Mistletoe of Cair Paravel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



The year Lucy was twenty, she declared that they would have mistletoe at the Christmas ball. 

She was newly back in Narnia from her foreign travels, her hair chopped short (“Oh, _Lucy_ ,” Susan had mourned, and Lucy had said cheerfully “Easier to keep clean on the road, Su! And I like it!”) and a tattoo of a bird in flight on the inside of her wrist. (Edmund had been fascinated, and was sketching designs for a tattoo of his own.) Her travels had brought her much pleasure and adventure, and she had made many new friends.

Still, it was good to be home again. New friends could never replace the old, and she smiled at Tumnus, who was her oldest friend in all of Narnia and had been much missed on her journeys. Now he handed her the mistletoe as she pinned it piece by piece around the ballroom. 

“Gracious,” Susan said, surveying their work. “We’ll have a riot of kissing.”

“Excellent,” Edmund said, winking at Lucy. He was the heartthrob of three kingdoms this year, and knew it. At least four princesses or princelings were in love with him at any given time. His dance card was always full, and if he didn’t complain of his blisters from too much dancing, it was only because Lucy teased him whenever he did. 

“Peter needs a helping hand,” Lucy told them. “He’s not exactly _shy_ , but he’s just a little too solemn, don’t you think? A little too High King-ish these days. He needs somebody to kiss him under the mistletoe and remind him that he’s flesh and blood too.”

She pinned the last of the mistletoe up and stepped back to take a look. “There. Now if Cor finally makes a move, everything will be ready.”

“What will be ready?” Peter asked, coming up in time to hear only the last few words. 

“The ball,” Lucy said, sweetly. She was the youngest. She’d always been able to wrap Peter around her little finger.

***

“Lucy!”

Lucy had been on her way back to her room when she heard Tumnus calling her name. She turned. “Yes?”

He looked torn between harassed and amused. She smiled. When she had been young, Tumnus had seemed so much older than she was, but now that she was quite grown up, she realised that he was still quite young. Certainly young for a faun. It showed most noticeably whenever he was pressed into a bureaucratic or organisational role. They flustered him, and made him look rather adorably bewildered.

Adorable? Where had that thought come from? She pushed it away impatiently.

“Mrs Beaver says that if you don’t move your trunks from the Great Hall, she’s going to build a dam out of them.”

“Oh, drat,” Lucy said. The downside of going on a world tour and arriving home at Christmas is that one did collect so many presents along the way. Her trunks had grown ever heavier and more numerous, and upon arriving home she’d simply dumped them all in a corner of the Great Hall and had done. Unpacking had been far too much work. Now she had to pay the piper, for Mrs Beaver would never let the grand ball take place with dusty trunks cluttering about. “Help me drag them up here, and I’ll owe you forever.”

Tumnus smiled. “Of course.”

It was dirty work, and by the time they’d pushed, pulled, and sworn the last trunk up the last flight of stairs and into Lucy’s sitting room, they were both rumpled and tired. Lucy sat on the lid of the trunk and closed her eyes. “Thank goodness that’s done,” she said. “Now I just have to sort all the presents out and wrap them. Hopefully I remember which presents are for which people.”

She opened her eyes again, looking up at the ceiling, and saw mistletoe hanging from the chandelier above her head. “Su’s been here,” she said, laughing, and turned her head to share the joke with Tumnus.

The expression on his face stopped her laugh mid-breath. She had caught him unawares; he was looking at the mistletoe, and for a split second she saw the longing in his eyes, before he caught her gaze and flushed, his face going blank in an instant. 

_Tumnus_? Lucy had never thought of Tumnus that way before. He’d always simply been her friend, the very best Narnian friend she’d ever had. He’d been a teenager in faun years when she was small, and now they were both young adults – there was no reason why they _shouldn’t_ move beyond friendship, now that she thought of it. Perhaps she simply hadn’t been thinking that way before – but now, fresh off her return from her world journey, on which many previously unknown things had been ventured and learned, and a fair few people kissed along the way, her eyes were suddenly opened. 

She watched the blush mounting on his cheekbones, the way he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands. She’d caught out his secret, in that one unguarded moment, and everything between them hung suspended in her hand. 

“Well,” she said, and felt the smile pull at the corners of her mouth. “Are you going to come over here and kiss me?”

The smile that broke over Tumnus’s face, wondering and then exultant, was every Christmas present she had ever wanted, all rolled up into one.

***

“So,” Edmund said at the banquet that night, “I see you found the mistletoe in your room.”

“Is it that obvious?” Lucy said, hoping she hadn’t misbuttoned the back of her gown. They _had_ been in quite a hurry trying to make it to dinner on time, and she hadn’t had a chance to check. 

Edmund made a funny face at her. “You’re glowing.”

“I moved a lot of trunks today,” Lucy said. “Healthy exercise glow.”

She didn’t really mind if her siblings knew. She planned to tell them soon. Now that she and Tumnus had found each other, she didn’t think they’d be able to hide it for very long. Even looking at him made her want to toss him over her shoulder and carry him away upstairs. (Er. Hopefully she wasn’t glowing more now at the thought.)

She was a little worried about how they might react, though. She _was_ the baby of the family, and everyone was always so protective. And she supposed Tumnus was a little older, though honestly she didn’t notice it. Hopefully her siblings would accept it without fuss. Otherwise she’d just become increasingly obnoxious until they did. (One was not the youngest in a family without learning how to get one’s way.)

“Healthy exercise glow, my foot,” Edmund said. “Su, what do _you_ think Lucy was doing this afternoon?”

Susan, thus appealed to, looked up from an apple tartlet with a smile. “Well, I think she finally realised that she and Tumnus have been flirting for the past two years,” she said, serenely. “And about time, too.”

“The poor faun was moping the whole time you were away,” Edmund said. “Not that he told us why. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.”

“You knew for two years? Why didn’t anyone tell _me_?”

“You’d come to it in your own time,” Susan said, patting her hand. “And it’s nicer that way anyway. You wouldn’t have wanted me to tell you before you were ready.”

Susan’s own courtship with Aravis had stretched over a year before Aravis finally moved from Archenland to Cair Paravel. Lucy supposed she knew what she was talking about. 

Still. She looked around at all the mistletoe that she’d industriously hung. “I’ll have to make up for lost time,” she said, tapping her lip with her finger. “New project: kiss Tumnus under every single bit of mistletoe in the castle.”

Tumnus, who was returning to the table from visiting with a Talking Horse across the room, must have caught the last sentence, because he turned bright red. Lucy smiled at him, and let her tongue dart out across her lips. 

After all her adventurings of the past year, she had made it home for Christmas. Now she was not only surrounded by her family and friends, replete with food, wine, and jollity, but she had discovered a new love flowering from one of her oldest friendships, and a new chapter of her life seemed about to begin. 

Impulsively, she stood up from the table and held out her hand to Tumnus. “Dance with me,” she said, raising his fingers to her lips for a quick caress, and led him out to the floor. 

(Edmund wolf-whistled, because he was Edmund, but Susan smiled, and Mrs Beaver beamed, and the Talking Horses tapped their hooves on the floor, which was their version of applause. In a minute, Cor would summon the courage to ask Peter to dance, and then Susan and Aravis would join, and before long all the tables would be pushed back and the swirl of couples around the dance floor would be intoxicatingly full. Lucy and Tumnus would sway together in the centre of it all, and Lucy would kiss him, no mistletoe necessary, pulling him close against her and surrendering to her joy.)

It was Christmas at Cair Paravel, and Lucy had never been happier in all her days.

***


End file.
